


Coffee Break

by Nununununu



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Coffee, Cookies, Courtship, Crushes, Don't copy to another site, Fluff, Food, Humor, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:41:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25515958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: Zack attempts to woo the General in his own way. In other words, via caffeine and cookies.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Sephiroth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63
Collections: Eat Drink and Make Merry 2020





	Coffee Break

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueWolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueWolves/gifts).



> A treat for BlueWolves. Your prompt for Zack/Sephiroth humor and fluff caught my imagination, and I couldn't resist :)
> 
> (Originally posted 26/07; updated for author reveals)

“I brought you coffee, General!” Opening the General’s door with his booted foot, given his hands were full with the three cups of coffee he was concentrating on juggling, it took Zack a moment too long to realise the step he took into Sephiroth’s office took him directly into the pathway of a particular long, sharp and pointy sword.

“Y-yikes!” Realise he did, though, almost too late, and nearly got scalding hot coffee all over himself as he yelped and sought to instinctively leap back, “Sorry!”

Yeah, okay, perhaps he should have given Sephiroth some warning before just barging in.

“Leave and consider yourself lucky not to be further reprimanded,” was Sephiroth’s chilly response, the General not even looking at him as he set Masamune aside and returned to the stack of paperwork on his desk, “Shut the door on your way out.”

Zack eyed the man’s bent head as he scrawled on the topmost form.

“So… I should leave the coffee? I got Angeal some too, you see, and he’s just going to drink yours as well if you don’t take it and it really is good, I got it from this great place I know, and I saw you overseeing the parade earlier and thought you looked kind of tired –”

“ _Leave_ ,” Sephiroth’s head rose enough that Zack saw his eyebrow twitch.

Departing promptly suddenly seemed like a good idea.

“Leaving! General, sir!” Ducking his head in place of a salute, he manoeuvred Sephiroth’s coffee onto a nearby highly polished shelf sporting a vase of tasteful silk flowers he was somehow certain Sephiroth had quite possibly never even noticed, wincing at the fact there wasn’t a coaster – something Angeal’s office contained in abundance.

Busy congratulating himself for succeeding in his self-appointed mission, he forgot to shut the door on the way out.

\--

“Knock,” was Sephiroth’s somewhat long-suffering comment when Zack hip-checked the door open wide enough to sidle into the General’s office, carrying three cups again this time, plus a paper packet of cookies balanced on top.

“I can’t, sorry!” Zack said smartly in his speaking to superior officers’ voice – also one of the voices he used when he was talking his way out of trouble, funnily enough – and caught the door with his elbow when it sought to swing back on him, depositing one of the cups on the shelf along with the paper packet.

“What are those,” Sephiroth’s voice was flat, but he was curious, Zack was certain he was.

“Cookies,” Glancing over at the General and finding him sat at his ever more crowded desk as if he never left it, Zack sent the man a sunny grin, “Thought they’d go well with the coffee.”

Sephiroth was said to have a preference for coffee so strong that if anyone else drank it they risked heart failure – and this came from Angeal, who Zack _might_ have wheedled with after training in order to obtain this information back when he originally hatched his cunning plan – Angeal who drank his own coffee near thick enough to stand a spoon up in.

Zack – who habitually loaded his with triple shots of caramel and hazelnut syrups, cream and however much sugar he could pack in – shuddered.

“Whatever would make you think that,” Sephiroth had a little smudge of ink on his forefinger, presumably from using that pen of his so much – a little crack in the otherwise flawless façade he presented seemingly even when alone in his office.

Well, that, and the slight indent between silver brows from his frown.

“Lucky guess?” This seemed a better answer, somehow, than the truth that Zack had – after many hours of persuasion during a joint mission with his mentor – managed to ease the deep secret out of Angeal that the General had an incurable sweet tooth.

“Hmm,” One of Sephiroth’s eyebrows minimally quirked. His gaze, on Zack rather than the paperwork this time, was piercing, the green of his irises striking. Zack’s heart was busy making itself known in his chest.

To cover for this, he fished the coaster he’d purloined from Angeal’s office out of a pocket in his uniform trousers, gave it a little polish, and transferred Sephiroth’s coffee cup onto it after placing it upon the shelf.

That eyebrow lost its quirk in place of another twitch. Zack grinned, finding himself for some reason deeply pleased with himself.

“Sir.”

He put the other two coffees down this time – as before, his and Angeal’s – and saluted, before picking them back up and negotiating Sephiroth’s office door all over again.

He thought he possibly heard the General start to say something, but by the time this registered, Zack was already heading off down the corridor.

\--

“The door,” Sephiroth greeted him, when Zack shouldered his way in, his arms full of coffee, cookies and a selection of fresh fruit – difficult to get in Midgar, even for Soldiers. But he bet Sephiroth, with his sweet tooth, was a sucker for strawberries.

“Mm?” Zack glanced up and found himself doing a double take at the sight of the General not only standing but moving towards him, hands outstretched to free Zack from some of the cups.

“You left it open again last time,” Sephiroth didn’t roll his eyes – of course the General wouldn’t do something like that – but Zack was convinced there was something about the man’s face that sort of hinted at it.

“Oh no, sorry!” It was hard to speak, in honesty, given Sephiroth’s fingers brushed his as the General next liberated the cookies.

“Sit down,” Sephiroth then returned to his side of the desk. There was a second chair nearby Zack, one he hadn’t seen in the office before. And the General’s desk was clearer than usual of paperwork, the polished wooden surface instead displaying the coaster Zack had purloined – along with a second one.

“Um, okay?” Biting down very hard on a gleefully giddy grin, Zack all but fell onto the chair.

“Thank you for this,” This said, Sephiroth busied himself near draining his cup of the scalding hot, ultra-strong coffee, before setting in on the cookies – and the strawberries too, when Zack, joyfully delighted, nudged them over towards him.

“You’re, ah. You’re welcome,” Zack accepted the cookies when Sephiroth surfaced enough from the midmorning snack to push the packet over to him in return, “Thanks.”

“You will let me take you out for coffee tomorrow?” Sephiroth glanced at him, those green eyes so mesmerising and his tone so smooth Zack was already nodding agreement before he registered the content of the question.

“I –” He both nearly swallowed his tongue and dropped his coffee on his lap when his brain caught up. “I’d, hah. Be delighted. Sir!”

“I think, perhaps, you could call me by my name,” While Sephiroth’s expression appeared as cool as ever, there was nonetheless something about it that very much implied a smile, “When it is just the two of us.”

_Just the two of us –_

“Yes sir!” Zack’s response was as enthusiastic as it was automatic. He caught himself a second later, “I mean, Sephiroth.”

Small though it was, this time Sephiroth’s smile was unambiguous.

Down the corridor in his own office, Angeal raised an eyebrow at the time, set his own neatly completed paperwork to one side, and chuckled a little to himself as he left the room for the staff cafeteria and its decidedly subpar coffee, given his cup sat forgotten in Sephiroth’s office.


End file.
